“Field Properties” (1)

The properties of a field are dependent on the selected “Data type”.
For example, the “Text” data type has many more properties than the “Numeric” data type.

I will discuss a few of them here.

1. Format

The “Format” box. We can use “Format” to display the text entered in a certain way.
For example, the > sign (greater than sign) displays all typed text in upper case.

The < character (less than sign), will display all text typed in lowercase.

An account, at least in Belgium, consists of three digits, then a strip of six digits and another strip of two digits at the end. The @ sign determines a character.

If you wish, you can add a certain text after every typed text by first typing ‘&’ character followed by the text in quotation marks.

If you want fill color for the text, first type the type ‘&’ sign, followed by square brackets. Specify the color between the brackets
Access understands the following colors: Black, Blue, Green, Red, Yellow, Cyan, Magenta, and white.

Now, when you type in a record, “Access” will automatically apply entered “Formats”.

2. “Input Mask”

Some information that we enter has a standard formatting, such as zip code, phone number or an account number.
You can force employees to enter certain information in the correct way, by making use of the “Input masks”.
The fastest and easiest way is to click on the “Wizard” button on the right side of the textbox.
This “Wizard” is available only when we set the data type of the field to text.

This opens the “Input Mask Wizard.” dialog

The first screen of the Wizard shows common input masks.
You can select a box and click the “Preview” to create a preview.
When you are satisfied, click the “Finish” button.

Otherwise, click the “Next” button.
Clicking the “Next” button opens the second window of the Wizard.
In the second window of the Wizard, you can display the text in the “Input Mask”.
Again, you have a preview.

Click “Finish” when you are satisfied. This closes the Wizard.
Click “Next” when you want to proceed with the Wizard.
In the last window of the Wizard, you have the option to save symbols in the field .
Keep in mind that your field width should be large enough.

For your information:

The figures in an input mask are composed of a 0 or a 9.

The 0 means that the figure must be filled, the 9 means that the figure is optional.
So in the picture above, this means when we fill out this field, the number of 4 digits MUST exist.
If this is not the case we get a warning window where you are told how to enter the information properly.

An input mask consists of three sections, separated by semicolons.
In the first part, the placeholder for characters.
In the above case, it is “B “, the B and space between quotation marks because, it is a letter. Letters or words are placed in quotation marks and the space is there because we want a space between the letter B and the zip code number.

In the second part, we have 1 but, we have the choice between 0 and 1.
We choose 0 as we want to store data and the mask.
We choose 1 if we want to store the data only.

In the third section we have the temporay sign indication. By default, this symbol is an underscore (_).
If you want to use a different character, type this in the third part of the mask.

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